DOCTORS DROP OUT TO FIGHT FOR PEACE

He served in the U.S. Navy Hospital Corps. He graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa and doctor of medicine. He took the straight path up to chief radiologist at Holy Cross Hospital.

She has an impressive background as well. She was the chief psychologist for a large school district in Minnesota. She has worked in Broward County's public school system and at the private Pine Crest Preparatory School.

Now they are unemployed, and willfully so.

Actually, they are unpaid. They've never been more employed.

George and Virginia Meyer, in their mid-50s, have become what the couple call "full-time peace people." They gave up their moneyed careers as of Jan. 1 to devote themselves to the nuclear disarmament movement.

"What the heck good is it to make all this money to leave to our kids if there's going to be no future?" Virginia Meyer said.

Their most recent task has been organizing and promoting a program, scheduled for Wednesday, that will feature renowned cardiologist Dr. Sidney Alexander, president of the national Physicians for Social Responsibility. Alexander will speak at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Omni Auditorium, 1000 Coconut Creek Blvd., Pompano Beach.

When George Meyer decided to leave Holy Cross and his six-figure salary after 23 1/2 years to become a professional peacenik, it caused a bit of a stir.

"This is a black-or-white area. No one is sort of neutral about it," said hospital public relations director Betty Mathis. "There are some (doctors) who are as deeply devoted to the issue as George is. There are others who think he is whistling in the dark, that he might as well be spitting in the ocean."

It's tempting to see them as "limousine liberals," playing at activism as they tap away on their home computer in a 10th-floor oceanfront condominium in Pompano Beach.

They acknowledge that not everyone has the good fortune to be able to quit their jobs to dabble in a social cause. But the limousine liberal aura won't hold for long -- they plan to move to a less lavish place now that their incomes are no longer rolling in.

And George Meyer has to laugh at the "liberal" label.

"I'm a lifelong Republican. I've always thought I was conservative. I voted for (Barry) Goldwater," he said, relishing the contrast to his current leanings. "I've learned a lot since then.

"The turning point was reading Jonathon Schell's The Fate of the Earth," he said. The anti-nuclear book "just changed our lives. We really felt we didn't have a choice.

"You finally come to a point where you say, somebody's got to do something about it. It's crazy," he said. "It's like having a fire in the kitchen. You don't just say, 'Oh well, I'm going to go play golf.' "

After reading Schell's book, the couple started seeking more information and began joining anti-nuclear groups. George Meyer is a member of the National House of Delegates of the physicians' group. For the past several years, they devoted much of their off-work time to the cause.

They were among the group that in July protested the civil defense plan to evacuate residents from Broward and Palm Beach counties in the event of a nuclear war and send them to tiny Frostproof in rural central Florida.

The more they learned about nuclear war, the more urgent they thought their mission was. Soon, it was inevitable, they said: They had to work on it full- time.

Both say their new life is really not so different from their past. "We care about preserving life on Earth. That was my concern when I was a psychologist. That's my concern now," Virginia Meyer said.

Her husband agreed, saying his anti-nuclear views stem naturally from the medical profession.

"There is no way in a nuclear war that there is going to be any medical help. So what you have to do is practice preventative measures," he said.

Some of their colleagues didn't quite see things that way when the couple told them of their plans to be full-time peace activists.

"They sort of say, 'That's interesting,' then they ask about our grandchildren or something," he said.

The "What! Are you, crazy?" question usually remains unasked, Meyer said. "They might think that, but they're too polite to say that. Actually, the silence is worse. Some of them really don't want to talk about it," he said.

Some reactions have been decidedly more outspoken. "Someone asked us why we didn't just move to Russia if we felt this way," she recalled.

Because this is a democracy, she responds.

So now the couple work out of what was once their dining room, now equipped with a computer, a printer, files and papers. Suddenly, dinner parties seem trivial, Virginia Meyer said.

One of her husband's inventions has been a 22-foot-long printout that depicts the destructive capabilities of a Trident submarine in comparison to the Hiroshima blasts in World War II.

Another involves dropping one BB pellet into a tin can -- which formerly held some fancy crackers -- to represent all the firepower used in World War II. Then, a steady stream of pellets is poured in, crackling and bouncing, to represent all the nuclear weapons in the world today.

"We don't think we have a lot of influence. We're like a grain of sand, but we have to do it," Virginia Meyer said. "One does what one can do."

She is perhaps the one with more of an activist past. "I marched against the Vietnam War. I doubt he would have done that," she said with a laugh.

About the most radical thing her husband ever did before falling into the disarmament cause was to act on his anti-smoking crusade. He persuaded Holy Cross to get rid of the cigarette machines in the building.

And then there was the time the couple convinced a group that the manufacturer of Virginia Slims cigarettes was not an appropriate sponsor for a tennis tournament to benefit cancer research.

He still has that look so common to doctors, that knowing, authoritarian look, but George Meyer has become decidedly skeptical toward experts, at least as far as nuclear issues go.

"People say, 'What can you do? You should leave it to the experts.' The idea that the experts know what's going on is so wrong, so foul. They're the ones who got us into this in the first place," he said.